Hangover buddies Todd Phillips and Bradley Cooper are making a miniseries about ISIS

By William Hughes | August 4, 2016 | 11:13pm

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Todd Phillips’ upcoming movie War Dogs seems to represent a departure for the Hangover director, moving away from films exclusively about drunken debauchery and the headaches they subsequently produce and into something a little weightier. (Sure, Miles Teller and Jonah Hill are still doing coke and banging strippers, but now they’re doing it in the context of being international arms dealers.) Now, Phillips seems to be moving even further down that realpolitik path, with Deadline reporting that he and Bradley Cooper will both be executive producing a miniseries about ISIS for HBO.

Based on the Pulitzer-winning non-fiction book from Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise Of ISIS will examine the rise of the terrorist organization, a premise that doesn’t sound like it has a lot of room for rampaging tigers or drugged up Zack Galifianaki. (We can probably rule out a Ken Jeong cameo, too, but you never really know with that guy.) Cooper—whose producing portfolio includes American Sniper, for which he was nominated for two Oscars—apparently brought the book to his Joint Efforts production partner Phillips, and the two approached Warrick (and HBO) about turning his award-winning writing into a limited series for the premium cable network.